


Mankind - Redefined

by lobsterMatriarch



Series: Stories From Under The Sink [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Drama, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, canon character death, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 02:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8039503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobsterMatriarch/pseuds/lobsterMatriarch
Summary: Nora always knew the Institute couldn't be allowed to survive, and she knew what that meant for her. Facing it is a completely different story.aka canon is terrible and I hate it so it must be fixed.





	Mankind - Redefined

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, we were robbed of what could have been a really important and poignant decision by giving Shaun cancer and having him die no matter what. It's been bothering me since I finished the damn game. So here is what I think should have been an option.

“I didn’t expect to see you again.”  
  
Nora’s blood ran cold at the sound of his voice, his clear, even disappointment that cut through her resolve. Part of her hoped that he would have been off in one of the laboratories, or a meeting room. A place that would keep him far from the fighting, where she would never have to think of him again. She already had the blood of Dr. Holdren drying in the seams of her armor, scraps of burning rubber and skin stinking in the laces her boots. Wasn’t that enough?  
  
Of course not. If there was one thing Nora had learned, it was that the wasteland and all the scum sunken below it had a wonderful sense of dramatic irony. Shaun was her responsibility, she’d accepted that since the day he was born. She’d taken him into her arms and promised to give him the world, and he would never give her the luxury of forsaking him to the nuclear option.  
  
“You had me fooled.” He stepped in her path, between her and the terminal that would bring about a second judgement day. “I really believed that you understood what it was that we were fighting for. So, will you tell me why you’ve betrayed me?”  
  
Shaun watched her with such hate in his eyes. Nate’s eyes. The pistol in his hand still pointed downwards.  
  
“Help me,” she pleaded. “It doesn’t have to end like this. The Commonwealth deserves a chance to survive without—“  
  
“Stop.” He was always so cold. “Spare me your ramblings, mother. You know, I honestly believed that you were on my side?”  
  
Gunshots rang from below, shouts for help from the wounded, the fallen. Shaun closed his eyes against it.  
  
“But here we are.”  
  
“You’re hurting people, Shaun. People I care about. Everyone on the surface lives their life in fear because of what you do down here.”  
  
“Progress must always come at a cost.” He said. “Surely you’re not so naive as to think otherwise?”  
  
She sized him up, square shoulders like his father but with her own dimpled cheeks. Which side of the family had given him this calculating cruelty?  
  
“No.” With a deep breath, she leveled her rifle at his head. “I’m not.”  
  
He laughed, dry and bitter, while she tried to blink through the tears that threatened her aim. “You’d do that, mother? You would kill me?”  
  
She would. She had to. The only future he promised was built on terror and secrets and sacrifice.  
  
“And I had such high hopes for you.” He said, sanctimonious to the end. “To think that you would prioritize your wasteland degenerates over the only hope mankind has of progress. Over your own flesh and—”  
  
“Don’t!” She shouted, her voice shrill and broken against the sterile white walls. “You haven’t given me a choice, you know that! Don’t tell me I’m wrong, after everything the Institute has done to us! What about your father?!”  
  
“We’ve discussed this.”   
  
“NO! Not acceptable!” Nora cursed the tears that spilled over her cheeks. This man deserved no mourning, no signs of weakness from her, but still they came. “You called him collateral damage, and now you have the nerve to lecture me about family?!” 

Shaun paused, finger itching at the downturned pistol.  
  
“...I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I’m in no place to tell you about the merits of family. I only ask that you consider the generations of work you will destroy, and the endless discoveries that will never be made in our absence.”  
  
She struggled against the tears, against the hiccuping sobs that left her words shaking and empty of the purpose they needed. “Just… listen to me. There’s a whole world above you that you choose not to see! We don’t need to be enemies, if you help me, together we can—“  
  
Shaun was never built for the physical, moving slowly with poor aim, and she managed to dodge fast enough that his shots ripped through her flesh and not her brain. One, two, a third puncturing just above her elbow and two more missing entirely. She screamed, more from the shock of it than from the pain, her grip on her rifle suddenly locked as if with a thousand tiny needles.  
  
Shaun nearly threw the pistol down, scrambling back as it clattered to the floor.  
  
She clutched her hand to her shoulder, her chest, struggling to keep some of her blood where it belonged. They watched each other in silent shock, the tears in her lashes now drying as it became more difficult to swallow.

He was unarmed, stupid enough to throw down his weapon after failing to kill his target.  
  
It was Nora’s turn to laugh.  
  
“All this time,” she wiped her eyes, the smear of sweat and tears and something darker hot across her face. “All these lives, and you’ve never actually taken any of them yourself, have you?”  
  
Shaun’s eyes lingered on the new holes in her body. “I’m not like your _friends_.” He drew out the word in a hiss. “I don’t solve my problems through violence. I am not a murderer.”  
  
Maybe he wasn’t. The devil was in the details in all of these things. He was her son, yet he was a stranger with none of Nate’s kindness or her wit. He had killed, certainly, but he never laid a hand on a weapon, never looked his enemy in the eye.  
  
Blood ran in rivers down her arm, sticky between her fingers on its path to the floor below.  
  
“No. You’re not.” With tremendous effort, she lifted her gun once again. Shaun’s eyes trailed, first following her blood to the floor then back up to her face. He watched her, carefully, like he had watched her struggle and starve her way through the ruins of their happy home before making her way to Diamond City.  
  
“You’re a tyrant.”  
  
Her shot rang clear, loud enough to drown out the din below. Nora’s ears buzzed with the hollow thud of her heart, the metallic clatter of her casing, the slow hiss of breath as Shaun fell to his knees and to the floor. Nate’s eyes stared at her, as open and blank as the day she woke in Vault 111, and she found she couldn’t look away.  
  
The pain from her shoulder flared, and for one long, aching moment she prayed that it would kill her.  
  
With a second round of gunfire from below Nora knew that dying was a luxury she couldn’t afford; she would have plenty of time when her work was done. With leaden feet she made her way to the terminal, typing with her left hand as the right couldn’t unwind itself from the trigger. She issued the evacuation order, hoping that whatever innocents were left alive would listen and obey, before overriding the security systems and granting access to the reactor further down.  
  
Her vision blurred in a haze of black and green and sterile white. Standing straight became a monumental effort. With one hand and her teeth she uncapped a stimpak, clumsy fingers plunging it somewhere into her side rather than her shoulder. It would have to be enough.  
  
Stand. Turn. Walk. Nora willed her feet not to give out as she made her way back to her friends, but they couldn’t even make it to the stairs before she collapsed on the railing for support. Her pain flared again, and she pried her wooden fingers from her rifle to reach for the med-x stored against her thigh.  
  
Shaun’s eyes stared out from his body, the bullet hole in his forehead small and neat enough not to drip more blood than necessary.  
  
It took a moment for Nora to register that she was on the floor, that the pain in her head was now different from the pain in her arm. Her collection of chems and needles scattered across the floor, hands lacking the strength to grasp them, and her vision blurred again. Those sterile white walls were suddenly too bright, too empty for her head to process. She closed her eyes against the starkness of it, the medical cleanliness like her hospital in Concord, the lab coats and latex gloves, the blanket they had wrapped Shaun in before she was allowed to hold him.  
  
It was over now. She’d done well. All the doors were open, and there was no one left who could stand in their way. Des and Deacon and Tinker Tom were out there, and Nick and Hancock wouldn’t be far behind. They could make it to the reactor without her. They wouldn’t have a choice.  
  
She loved them more than she could ever say. They would be safe now. Even as Nate’s cold stare burned imprints into the black behind her eyelids, she hoped they might be able to understand.

* * *

  
  
Nora woke, and that in and of itself was a disappointment. The dull pain that bloomed soon after only added injury to insult.  
  
Her room was dark and quiet, certainly made for recovery, but where? An institute prison? It wasn’t possible, she’d taken out most of the coursers before making her way to Shaun, reaching the reactor and blowing the place sky high should have been a breeze.  
  
But if they’d succeeded, how had she survived?  
  
Shaun’s glassy eyes came unbidden to her mind, and the sharp, sudden cut of memory drew a hoarse cry from her throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth; no time for that now. He was dead, and waking up whatever friends or enemies were nearby with her blubbering wasn’t going to bring him back, so she sank her teeth into her palm and muffled her noise as tears leaked into her hair.  
  
Every silent sob, every gasp of breath pulled a dull ache from her shoulder and her heart. _Why_ had she survived?  
  
As if on cue, a quiet shift from the space to her right. She turned her head to find Hancock, fully dressed save for his hat, collapsed and still on a mattress next to her. In terror she reached out, fingers still heavy and wooden, and placed her hand just below the hole of his nose.  
  
A warm exhale. He was alive. Nora breathed a sigh of relief as another wave of tears fell.  
  
The shift hadn’t been Hancock, though. Behind him was a stone wall and a patchwork length of cloth that might have once been a blanket, hanging thin and gauzy but almost enough to provide some privacy. There were footsteps beyond, carefully placed to make the least noise possible, and Nora caught a firefly’s golden glow on the curtain hovering at just about eye level.  
  
Good old Nick.  
  
Another figure lay on the mattress to her left, too small to be Deacon and unrecognizable in the dark, but before she had a chance to puzzle any further Nick drew back the curtain.  
  
“You’re awake.” His voice was quiet, almost a question.  
  
“I think so.” She croaked.  
  
He entered quietly, sinking down to check her forehead with his softer left hand. “Your fever’s broken, but my god. You gave us a helluva scare.”  
  
The burn behind her eyes wouldn’t fade, no matter how fast she blinked. Nick took her hand, placing something cool in it.  
  
“Drink. You’ll feel better.”  
  
Purified water; even the thought of it made her stomach turn. Still she took it, and after the first hesitant sip she tried to drink it faster than her throat would allow. Nick tensed as she choked, coughing and sputtering and sending Hancock up in a fit of alarm.  
  
“Whazzat?!” He’d already drawn the knife below his pillow, and Nora pitied anyone who had attempted his assassination in the past.  
  
“Put that down before you poke an eye out.” Nick grumbled. “Wouldn’t want you to lose anything valuable.”  
  
Hancock settled, blinking back the paranoia before focusing on her.  
  
“…Sunshine.” He’d never said it that way before. She waited for him to finish, for that dreaded feeling of scrutiny and shame to pass with an “I’m glad you’re okay” or “you gave us a heart attack” or “what the fuck were you thinking”, but nothing ever came. He simply watched her, taking in her bloody hands, her wounded arm, her tired face.  
  
She sipped the water, slowly this time, and felt some of the blurry noise behind her eyes sort itself into human thought.  
  
The golden glow of Nick’s eyes gave a bit more clarity to the space— dark and dingy in a way so familiar she could cry. Never in her life did she think she would miss the ash and dust that coated her new world so much. It brightened more after she groped for her pip-boy, the familiar weight and green glow a stabilizing comfort. Hancock was haggard in the dim light, tense, curled inwards and small with sharp, lucid eyes. Nick was better but only just, his synthetic body hiding the strain more easily than his organic counterparts.  
  
And then, the third figure to her left. Definitely too small to be Deacon, with dark hair and squared shoulders and dimpled cheeks.  
  
“Mom?”  
  
No.  
  
She willed herself desperately to have died on the floor of that god-forsaken underground hellscape, but all she could do was watch as Nate’s eyes—Shaun’s eyes— stared back at her with surprise and wonder.  
  
“Shaun?”  
  
He shifted a bit, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he pushed back the blankets— nine or ten years old, the same Shaun she’d seen with Kellogg, the Shaun who called for Father when she found him in the Institute— and as he watched her, almost in slow-motion, his face screwed up against fat tears threatening to spill.  
  
“I thought you were dead!”  
  
And then he bawled, loud, childish sobs that shook his small body to the core, and she was at a loss. He tried to run to her, to throw his arms around her (Nick held him back, “shh, shh, she’s still getting better”) and Nora didn’t know whether to hold him or slap him away.  
  
One last cruel joke from Father, it seemed.  
  
“He found you,” Hancock settled in by her shoulder, moving to touch her but seeming to think better of it. “The kid’s screamin' was what got Nick and I movin’ your way. Kid had never seen a ghoul before, but he ran straight to me.” His voice cracked. “He begged me to help his mom.”  
  
“John…”  
  
He shook his head. “Don’t. I can’t think about it right now. ’S up to you what you do with him, but I just thought you oughta know.”  
  
Shaun— not Shaun— had given up fighting, now nearly limp over Nick’s arm as his shoulders heaved with hiccuping sobs. He still watched her, desperate for contact, one lonely child in a strange world just looking for a parent’s love.  
  
Touching him would make him real, make him hers, sever the last of his puppeteer’s strings and leave him as a real boy. She’d seen enough synths come and go from the memory den to know that a life could be rewritten in a few seconds of coding, and still bring emotions as strong as any organic memory. Could that be enough?  
  
Shaun wiped his nose on his sleeve, watchful eyes on her hand as it hesitated. Slowly, carefully at first, Nora wiped the tears from his eyes and brushed his bangs from his face.  
  
“I’m sorry I scared you. Thank you for coming to find me.”  
  
He sniffed. “I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t…”  
  
Ten years worth of programmed love and trust and care, put into words like it had always existed. While it wouldn’t heal the holes in her chest and arm it could be the start of something new.  
  
Nora inched towards him, wrapping him with her good arm and setting him on her chest.  
  
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
“Promise!” He buried his face in her shoulder.  
  
“I promise. Wherever we go, we go together.”  
  
He believed her, no questions asked, no suspicion, and his tears dried quickly as he clung to her. She was his mother, and he needed her to be okay.  
  
Nick sat a few feet away, the aperture of his lightning eyes focused on her wounds, still fresh but no longer bleeding. Hancock muttered something about needing a drink after all this, weary but good natured, and finally settled one shaking arm around her waist. She quietly reminded herself to find something nice for the both of them.  
  
Eventually his staccato sobbing evened into quiet sniffles before stilling altogether. His arms around her relaxed as he fell asleep, but she wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. He was scared, hurting, and if she let go he might wake up thinking that he was really all alone.  
  
Nick’s eyes flicked from her arm to her face. “You’re already in love.”  
  
Ten years of programmed memories could create a falsehood so convincing it becomes real. One touch would sever the strings.  
  
She was always in love. He was her son.

**Author's Note:**

> I fell in love with the world all at once.  
> All at once everyone felt so out of place.  
> Are you sinking in or clinging to the promises you made?
> 
> -Arizona, Rodeo Ruby Love


End file.
